The Many Worlds of the Willow Tree

Dr Abe V Rotor

The weeping willow (Salyx sp) looks sad and in mourning, its leaves droop and are pointed downward, extending to the ground or water where it grows on river banks and pool sides. Like a Narcissus, its reflection is an illusion of awe and wonder, and fear. 

The drooping branches though makes a perfect promenade shade and shelter; it is a favorite subject of art and poetry. 

Author under a willow tree (Salyx sp). UST campus, Manila

At the slightest breeze, the tree "weeps" in whispers, and sways daintily without any apparent effort. Few dare to plant willow by the window - it transforms into a spiritual being to the superstitious, and courts bad luck to the pessimist. 

But the willow is an important tree. Where it grows it creates an ambiance of mixed feelings, and to many cultures it is a tree that is much revered - and feared. Overall all, the world is not what it is without the willow - weeping to the sorrowful, hissing and vibrant to the hopeful, romantic to the lover, sacred to the religious, miracle cure to the healer.       ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Direct crude extract (ground fresh leaves) repels mosquitoes and flies. It also serves as fresh deodorant in the bathroom and kitchen.  Dilute with tap water at 1:4, filter with ordinary cloth, and spray (atomizer) on garden plants and in dark corners. Another preparation is by dissolving the fresh extract with ethyl alcohol 1:2 ratio, air dry, and add Vaseline or Petroleum Jelly to the powder residue. This serves as ointment of minor wounds and skin problems.    

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The Importance of the willow tree
Medicine -

• The leaves and bark of the willow tree contain Salicin which is metabolized into salicylic acid in the human body. 
• Precursor of aspirin. 
• Salicin is isolated in crystalline form and formulated as acetylsalicylic acid, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. 
• Provides temporary relief. 
• Ancient remedy for common ailments to the Sumerians, Greeks and Native Americans 
• Claimed to be effective in cure of diseases including cancer. 

Agriculture - as source of nectar and pollen for bees. 

Energy - biomass and biofuel, 

Art - 

• Charcoal for drawing, wood for sculptures 
• Garden features and landscaping 
• Pen and ink paintings in China and Japan

Environment - 

• Hedges and landscaping 
• Land reclamation, soil building and soil reclamation
• Phytoremediation,(bioengineering) 
• Slope stabilisation and soil erosion control 
• Biofiltration, shelterbelt and windbreak 
• Wildlife habitat

Religion - 

• Ritual in Jewish holiday of Sukkot, and Buddhism
• Christian churches in northwestern Europe and Ukraine use willow branches in place of palms on Palm Sunday. 
• In China, some people carry willow branches on the day of their Tomb Sweeping or Qingming Festival. 
• Willow branches are put up on gates and/or front doors, to ward off the evil spirits. 
• The Goddess of Mercy Guanyin is shown seated on a rock with a willow branch. 

Literature - 

• Ancient Korean poem goes, "By the willow in the rain in the evening." The poet Hongrang to her parting lover wrote, "...I will be the willow on your bedside."
• In Japanese tradition, the willow is associated with ghosts. It is popularly supposed that a ghost will appear where a willow grows. Willow trees are also quite prevalent in folklore and myths.
• In English folklore, a willow tree is believed to be quite sinister, capable of uprooting itself and stalking travelers.
• Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story called "Under the Willow Tree" (1853) in which children ask questions of a tree they call "willow-father", paired with another entity called "elder-mother"
• Old Man Willow in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, appearing in The Lord of the Rings.
• "Green Willow" is a Japanese ghost story. Other stories: "The Willow Wife" and "Wisdom of the Willow Tree."
• Remember "The Willow in the Wind?"

A slice of rainbow, and other verses of Nature

15 Verses of Nature

A slice of rainbow, and other verses of Nature 

Life is like a rainbow: You need both the sun 

and the rain to make its colors appear.

Dr Abe V Rotor

A slice of rainbow, photo by AVRotor, QC

1. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living 

creatures of every kind on the earth. Genesis 9:16

2. In abstract art you lose reality;
How then can I paint truth and beauty?

3. Brick wall, brick roof, brick stair,
Glisten in the rain, dull in summer air.

4.What's essential can't be seen by the eye
Like the faith of Keller and Captain Bligh.

5. Similar is rainbow and moth in flight
When you see them against the light.

6. From respite in summer fallow,

The fields start a season anew.

7. From green to gold the grains become
As they store the power of the sun.

8. Not all sand dunes for sure
Ends up on empty shore.

9. One little smoke tells the difference,
Like a faint pulse is life's reference.

10. It's collective memory that I'm a part
To write my life's story when I depart.

11. Lost time, lost opportunity and lost gain,
like passing wind that may not come again.

12. Who sees silver lining of clouds dark and bold
seeks not at rainbow's end a pot of gold.

13. A clenched fist softens under a blue sky
like high waves, after tempest, die.

14. When a flock of wild geese takes into the air
a leader must get ahead to break the barrier.

15. In seeing our past we find little to share,

If the past is the present we're living in.

Dreams bridge our past and present

In the dark I called Dad and Basang but I received no answer.

Dr. Abe V. Rotor

 

 This is  a true story.

I went to bed very tired. For the whole day before my birthday I put on extra effort to finalize the manuscript of my forthcoming book which I was going to submit the following Monday. The title is Light from the Old Arch, a compilation of essays I wrote through the years.

It was just past 10 in the evening and Cecille, my wife, who had gone to bed ahead of me stirred. “I’ll just check what we will have for breakfast,” she said as I stretched my aching back and tired brain and apparently fell asleep.

Dr. Carl Jung: foremost psychologist 

of the unconscious mind

Soon I found myself in complete darkness. I could not trace my way to switch on the lights and after several attempts locating it on the wall and under curtain, an inexplicable fear crept, a fear I had never experienced before. I was in a strange domain yet it had the features of my home. There was total darkness, total silence.

Dad died in 1981 at the age of 78. He died here in our residence at Lagro after battling with the  complications of diabetes. We buried him at Himlayang Pilipino. Our oldest son, Pao who died at three, soon joined him in the same grave two years after.

Dad was deeply affected by my Mama’s death during the Second World War. My sister Veny was four then, and my brother Eugene was three. Dad suffered much - emotionally and physically - even after the four years of Japanese occupation. The war left our family and the country in ruins.

We continued to live in San Vicente which is adjacent to Vigan, the capital of Ilocos Sur. Dad confessed when we were already big that he feared so much we would not make it through in life. I know how extremely difficult it was even if dad owned farmlands and a neo-colonial house which my grandparents built in 1900. The three of us children knew little of the joys of childhood. My only uncle, Uncle Leo left dad to raised his own family in Pangasinan. He seldom visited us and spent time in our big house where he, like my dad, and their four siblings were born. Uncle Leo was the eldest and dad was the youngest. The rest of their siblings died at a very early age of smallpox which killed many people in Ilocos.

Basang my auntie and yaya took care of me from the time my mother died. I was less than two years old then. She never left us even when I came to Manila for my studies. She died three years after dad had gone. Manang Veny called me to come home when Basang died. We buried her in the town cemetery close to our departed relatives. Just before she died she gave me an antique narra aparador which I now use in keeping my personal things. In our dialect, she said, “This is the only thing I can give you.”

“You have given me everything,” I said.

Going back to the incident of October 21, I called dad three times, then called Basang once. It was a call apparently in fear. I felt helpless and lost. I froze. I could not move. I could not shout. And when I knew no help would come, I struggled. I succeeded in moving my fingers, my toes, until I was free.

Cecille had returned to our bedroom. “Why, you are pale and perspiring? What happened?" she asked, perplexed. She fetched me a glass of water.

“Was I shouting?” I asked automatically. “No,” she said calmly.

“I was dreaming,” I said and told her the whole story.

Dreams are visions of the unconscious part of our brain. That is why they occur in our sleep, when we are not aware of things the way we perceive them with our senses. Dreams are not fashioned by rational thoughts and actions, and therefore we have no power to decide and to act according to that decision. We are entirely under the control of our unconscious mind.

“Even when we are deeply asleep the psyche is still actively producing dreams,” says Carl Jung. “We may not always be aware of these activities, any more than we are aware of our physiological activities, but this does not mean they are not taking place.”

According to Jung we remember only a few of our dreams, yet recent evidences suggest that we dream continuously throughout the night. There in our unconscious mind our psyche is very much alive, performing psychological work such as perceiving, remembering, thinking, feeling, wishing, willing, attending and striving – just as breathing, digesting and perspiring are physiological activities.

But can we choose psychic values? According to Jung, when a high value is placed upon an idea or feeling it means that this idea or feeling exerts considerable force in influencing and directing one’s behavior. A person may place a high value on beauty. Another on power. Or knowledge. On the other hand, there are those who place a high value on wealth, even on sex and vices. These create the themes of our dreams.

This is the realm of our unconscious mind. This is where Carl Jung parted way from his friend Sigmund Freud’s as he blazed the trail of the psychology of the unconscious, which led to applied psychology - psychiatry. We are governed not only by our conscious mind. We are actually governed in a much deeper and wider sense than we ever think. As we feed the unconscious with conscious thoughts and experiences, so the unconscious feeds the conscious mind. And this cycle goes on throughout everyone’s life, starting in the womb.

Even when we were children, the mind did not lose the information it received. They were deposited. First in the conscious, then deposited in the unconscious part of our brain, which are saved like in the computer. Now, the information is ready at hand to be retrieved. Touch the key and the info comes out on the screen – the screen of our consciousness.

How will this affect our present mind now that we are older? Jung said that the previous information serves as archetype. To better understand how this archetype works in relation to what we think at present, here is an example.

Suppose here is a person who happened to be a witness of a murder with his own eyes when he was still a small child. When he sees a suspicious person, the image of the murderer he saw many years ago flashes. It is the archetype coming alive.

Or take another example. A kindly gentleman comes and asks for a favor. We size him up in relation to people who have the characteristics this man possesses. If our experiences are agreeable, it is likely that we going to entertain this person.

The images of people, places and events are fashioned in many ways by archetypes. Unlike the computer, the mind spontaneously brings out the archetype that the brain appropriately needs at that moment. This is the basis of many of our decisions – and prejudices.

Through dreams the loaded unconscious finds relief. Information flows out in the form of dreams. Dreams may be happy or sad, fearful or pleasant. Or at intervals of moods and settings and characters, as if information keep on flowing out. Nature has given us a safety valve to maintain our rationality and to release us from the prison walls of memory. Thus the other safety valve is forgetfulness.

Psychiatry is based on this principle. Lying on a couch the patient unloads his burden, fears, and uncertainties. He releases the pressure. Through this process he reaches a state of catharsis. He is relieved. He can now sleep. He can now work again.

People who cannot attain catharsis may suffer of psychiatric problems and may resort to drugs.  Do you often wonder why people resort to drugs? Why there are more and more people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol?

Why, many people try to “escape” reality?

October 21 is a memorable day for me. By reading this story one is led to think that something supernatural controlled the event and situation. I told Cecille, “Dad and Basang came.”

“Let’s pray for them,” she answered and made the sign of the cross.

I know they did not come; I went to them. It was a special day, my special day.

I realized my fault which lays not so much in not remembering them often, but I have ceased to see them as the models that shaped my life. That was too long ago. I no longer see the lessons I learned from them that are still relevant to my present life. I do not call them anymore in the midst of my problems. I have grown up. I do not seek their intercession and guidance anymore.

It is remiss and folly of not showing true feelings to those we love, living or dead, all because “I am always busy”, and because there will be someday to make up for it. There are always reasons or alibis for failing to offer them prayers, to visit their graves, or just to make those who too, are close to them happy. Oh, there are many, many ways.

Time has changed, and change has polarized our worlds. So with values of old and of the present world. The generation gap syndrome is creeping fast, more so with my own children who too, will have a world of their own in the near future.

There in the dark I called Dad and Basang, their names clear and loud, but my voice just faded without answer, not even its own echo. It was eerie and mysterious. The unconscious was swelling and it found an exit in the dark, psychic energy released in dream. And there as I called them, I realized I was the one who is lost – and found myself again.

This is a true story.

x x x

Centenarian Niko

Centenarian Niko
Dr Abe V Rotor

Niko at 10; below, 5 years after

 Photos taken August 7, 2012 at the height of a super 

flood that hit Metro Manila and neighboring provinces. 

His bark resonates at the crossroad,

standing through his den, 

night watch of the neighborhood, 

and pet to the children. 

A brave life this Doberman leads,

 trustworthy its essence;

Who would dare trespass his niche,

or ignore his presence?  

Oh, how the years quickly passed,

and age pushed to the edge;

Niko the brave, the alert no longer,

waits gentle on the ledge. ~ 

  

By human standard, 1:7 age ratio, Niko is a centenarian.  

Quotations my father taught me early in life

 "Nature never betrayed the Heart that loved her." - William Wordsworth

Dr Abe V Rotor 

1. "Happiness is one commodity that multiplies by dividing it."  Anon 

2. "A place for everything and everything in its place." Anon

3.  "He begins to die who quits his desires." G Herbert

4. "Just as tall trees are known by their shadows, so are good men known by their enemies." Old Chinese Proverb 

5. "If the official is himself upright, the people will play their roles without orders.  If he is not upright, even under orders the people will be disobedient." Confucius

6. "It's is always darkest just before the day dawneth."  Thomas Fuller

7. "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."  Epictetus

8. "Great men cherish excellence; petty men, their comfort.  Great men cherish rules, petty men, special favors." Anon

9. "Poor minds talk about people; average minds about events; great minds about ideas." Anon 

10. "Shall I tell you what knowledge is?  It is to know both what one knows and what one does not know." Confucius 

 11. "The eyes believe themselves; the ears believe other people." German Proverb

12. "The life of every river sings its own song, but in most thje song is long marred by the discords of misuse." Aldo Leopold

13. "The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned." Seneca

14. "Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of the fools." Napoleon 

15. The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant." Cecil

16, When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied." Tacitus

17.  A little learning is a dangerous thing." Alexander Pope

18. "A picture is a poem without words." Horace

19. "If you need a physician, employ those three - a cheerful mind, rest, and a temperate diet."  Zimmerman

20."To read without reflecting, is like eating without digesting." Burke

I shot my finger with an airgun

Dr Abe V Rotor

I bought an airgun from a classmate in high school, the Colegio de la Immaculada Concepcion (CIC Vigan) for fifty pesos, a good amount then, circa 1955. I was loading the pellet, when I dropped the rifle, and on hitting the ground, went off. The bullet pierced through the fleshy tip of my left forefinger. I tried to remove it but to no avail, so I went to the municipal doctor. There was no anesthesia available, and when I could no longer bear the pain, he simply dressed the wound and sent me home.

These vintage air rifles were popular in our time in the fifties (Internet). 

My wound soon healed, and the lead pellet was to stay with me for the next five years or so, when I finally decided to go for an operation. Had it not been for my playing the violin, and playing basketball, I would not have bothered to do so. And it was providential.

Our family doctor in Vigan, performed the operation. A mass of tissues snugly wrapped around the pellet, isolating its poison. He told me I was lucky. There are cases of lead poisoning among war veterans who bore bullets in their bodies.

There are providential things we should be thankful about.

x x x

I shot an arrow into the air and it fell on a newspaper

Dr Abe V Rotor

I must have been 4 or 5 years old. Dad was reading a newspaper - center spread - while relaxing on a rocking chair. I was playing Robin Hood nearby. Since our sala was very spacious (it had no divisions), anything on the ceiling and walls was a potential target. But something wrong happened.

In physics a crooked arrow would not follow a straight line, so it found an unintended mark – the center of the spread newspaper dad was reading. The arrow pierced through it and landed on my dad’s forehead, almost between his eyes. He gave me a good beating with my plaything as he wiped his forehead, blood dripping.

I did not cry, I just took the punishment obligingly. Dad must have seen innocence in my eyes. He stopped and gave me a hug. 

x x x